It might be quite safe to say that students who graduated merely one decade ago are probably significantly less computer literate than those who are preparing to graduate this winter. Our generation has witnessed such vast technological advancements even within the last 10 years.

Students of the 1990s might be aghast to walk into a classroom and find that papers and pens have effectively been replaced by laptops and notebooks, some slim enough to fit into manila folders.

Even the chalkboard has been replaced with PowerPoint lessons.

In comparison to the students before us, fewer of us have memorized our best friends’ phone numbers. Fewer of us have told time with an analog watch (the one with hands). Fewer of us have purchased textbooks in a bookstore.

Technology has effectively changed the way we communicate.

It has had a hand in evolving the way we learn and the way we study. It has even changed the way we cheat.

I am a critic, I must admit. But I am not a critic of technology itself. I am, rather, very much critical of the way we use it.

Advancement in technology has given us the ability to totally transform our education system, making the learning process more efficient.

But there is one problem.

In order for technological advancements to make our education system more efficient, we have to use them efficiently.

In the last two semesters, more of my professors are requiring us to submit our research papers into a system called “Turn-it-In.”

This system allows teachers to see what percentage of a paper is original content and what percentage is plagiarized.

And it just made me think.

Most universities have entire sections and sub-sections of their codes of conduct that are solely dedicated to warning students of the importance of maintaining academic integrity.

But when you have a generation of students who would sooner type a subject into a search engine than flip through pages in an encyclopedia, the line between plagiarism and original content is so easily blurred.

And it seems to me that the time to value academic integrity is not when students have already matriculated to college.

What does it say of our education system that we have graduated classes upon classes of students who have access to entire worlds of information at their fingertips but have never been taught how to paraphrase or use parenthetical documentation?

What does the world have in store for students who have mastered the art of ‘text speech’ but have no regard for the fundamentals of the English language?

What do you do with students who are outraged when their teachers require them to use a minimum of three hard copies of books or anthologies as sources in their research papers?

And, finally, what do you do when you have a generation of teachers who have to specify such minimum requirements?

The advent of Turn-it-In tells me two important things about our education system.

First, it tells me that teachers are realizing that there is an unprecedented need to crack down on plagiarism in our colleges and universities.

Secondly, it shows me that they are doing nothing about it.

But it is not entirely their fault.

It comes as no surprise that a younger generation of students, to which these technological advancements have such wide appeal, would naturally be savvier than their teachers.

As technology has progressed, it seems that certain teaching methods have stayed the same, desperately rewinding themselves like a VHS.

We can type questions into a search engine on our phones or laptops or iPods and have answers within seconds.

You cannot teach a generation like that with the same traditional methods with which you taught the typewriter generation.

This is the academic society to which we belong.

A society of students who will sit in classrooms where their teachers will recite word-for-word a PowerPoint they created three years earlier.

A generation of students who submit their assignments on a system called D2L, which is probably down for repairs as I write.

With the advent of Spark Notes, students can effectively produce a decent book report without ever having read the actual book.

This is the machine our education system is up against.

It is constantly evolving into something bigger and better than it was before.

And we can choose either to fight it or make friends with it.

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